The idea of using coal powder as engine fuel is now new. Unfortunately it never attained practical performance and realization. When last century, Rudolph Diesel started to build his engine, now known as Diesel engine, he originally wanted to use the coal powder as fuel for his engine. He however failed to devise reliable carburettor for powdered coal. Consequently he switched to the gas oil now known as diesel fuel. Rudolph Pavlikowski, Diesel's friend and collaborator continued the work of the coal powder carburettor. He, by 1915, succeeded to invent a perfectly working carburettor for Otto engines. Unfortunately, when such carburettors were attached to the engines, the engine's life was shortened down to only 200 working hours and in some cases, down to 100 working hours. Pavlikowski found that the shortened life was due to fine sand and other hard particles associated with the coal. Once arriving at the conclusion he began preparing special dust-free powdered coal fuels. That increased the life of the engines up to 500 working hours and to 700 hours when charcoal powder was used. That is again a very short life by present standards. During the second world war the German industry tried to revive the ideas of Diesel and Pavlikowski by producing test engines having cylinders and pistons made from resistant to dust abrasion cementing carbides. That way the life of the carbon powder powered Otto engines was increased up to 1,000 working hours which is again not sufficient for car and trucks, since at an average of 45 miles per hour mixed freeway and city driving such life equals to only 45,000 miles. Wood charcoal was not tested because during the war it was 3 to 5 times more expensive than coal and so it is now. I believe however that charcoal powder obtained from waste biomass like lingin, solid wastes, agricultural and forest wastes should significantly reduce the price of the charcoal powder. With good maintenance of present days trucks one is able to obtain 500,000 miles or more with them. That is more than 10 times the above 45,000 miles of engine life. Subsequent studies in Germany showed that even after a very careful refining of the coal powder to an amount of almost colloidal size hard particles still exist in the solid coal powder as fuel, sufficient to shorten the life of the engine by abrasion. Having in mind the above results, efforts, trials and failure to introduce the coal powder as engine fuel, I found that the best way to avoid the abrasion and the shortened engine life is not to abandon the inexpensive coal and solid wastes powders (which still could be perfect engine fuels), but to get rid of the metal pistons, the oil and the rings of the engine replacing them with gas pistons which can never be damaged by abrasive powders. The powdered coal fuel costs at least 10 times less than present gasoline and the city solid wastes are free of charge and could be converted into powdered charcoal. Consequently it is worth reviving the idea for using the carbon powder as a direct fuel at least for oversized engines and engines for trucks. I found that the radical way to solve the problem is to forget the present day pistons and rings of the internal combustion engine. That way I discovered and hereby introduce my imaginary pistons employed by my new rotary engines--meaning pistons without mechanical parts and abrasive friction. My gas piston is based on the following well established laws and equations:
(a). A rotating body (a rotating gas mixture in the case of this invention) maintains constant its angular momentum A.sub.m unless acted upon by an unbalanced external torque L. (Said torque is termed also MOMENT OF FORCE and is measured: L=force.times.perpendicular distance from axis to line of action of force). Hence: EQU A.sub.m =I.omega.=constant in absence of external unbalanced torque. (1)
(b). In a rotating body (again a rotating gas mixture for this case) the angular impulse A.sub.i =L.multidot.t is equal to the change of the angular momentum A.sub.m (produced by an unbalanced external torque action for a time "t" acting upon the body) during which the initial angular velocity .omega..sub.c of the body's moment of inertia changes to a final value .omega..sub.t which is mathematically expressed by the equation: EQU L.multidot.t=I(.omega..sub.t -.omega..sub.o)=A.sub.i ( 2)
Taking account that the MOMENT OF INERTIA of the gaseous body (employed by this invention, and regarded as "gas piston"), is equal to: ##EQU1## where; m.sub.i =mass of a given gas molecule; r.sub.i =radius of molecule's rotation, then it becomes clear that the system of equations 1 and 2 is continuously generating unbalanced torque because the moment of inertia of each revolving molecule diminishes from I=mr.sub.i.sup.2 down to I=mr.sub.f.sup.2 where: r.sub.i =initial trajectory radius and r.sub.f =final trajectoryal radius of the unbalanced torque of the revolving molecule. Therefore, it appears that the effect of the system of equations 1,2 and 3 is the one which is creating the unbalanced torque and forcing the rotating gas to act and behaves like invisible imaginary piston. Obviously whenever a rotating body (gaseous as well as solid) changes its initial radius r.sub.i down to a smaller radius said changing rotation is inavoidably changing the body's moment of inertia I. As a result when said radius of said rotating biody r.sub.i =r diminishes down to r-.DELTA.r the angular velocity .omega. must increase to .omega.+.DELTA..omega. in order to compensate the diminition of the moment of inertia I and thus to respect said conversation law 1. Vice versa when r increases to r+.DELTA.r then .omega. must decrease down to: .omega.-.DELTA..omega. The changes of .omega. to .omega..+-..DELTA..omega. however cause strong clockwise and counter clockwise torque collisions of the molecules upon any body which they may hit as result of which the body becomes accelerated. When all molecules of a gaseous body decrease their trajectorial radii simultaneously the integral torque of the gaseous body will act like a rotating piston. In accordance with law 2 that rotating piston for one molecule is: EQU .+-..DELTA.L.multidot.t=(I.noteq..DELTA.I)(.omega..+-..omega.) (4)
for a gaseous body of n molecules the integral angular impulse of the gas piston is: ##EQU2## where .omega. and .omega..sub.t are angular speeds of the gas molecules and I.sub.t is the resultant value of I.sub.i ##EQU3## is the analytical form of the imaginary piston deduced from formulas 2 and 3, the practical application of which is disclosed further in this specification while disclosing the engine's details. The imaginary piston is interpreted also as a gas piston because (5) is applied to a gas. The theoretical base of my thermodynamical cycles springs from a detailed heat balance of the internal combustion engine, which I made during 1950's. The mechanical system for such realization however followed later after I discovered the rotary centers of the ellipse.